Don't You Dare
by NullNoMore
Summary: Lin is publishing a special spooky version of her skell fanfiction fanzine. She just needs to hammer out some details. Also, maybe remove some spiders. So many spiders. Happy Halloween 2018! All the good things belong to MonolithSoft, except for a very little unsupportable headcanon.
1. 1 Editorial Review

**Don't You Dare/1/Editorial Review**

 **a/n: Happy Halloween 2018! Lin edits a skell fanfiction 'zine, and they are _this_ close to having their special spooky edition ready. They have just one last, particularly difficult author to deal with.**

 **All the good things (except a little headcanon about families) belong to Monolithsoft. Yes, Miss Warawa writes fanfic in-game, at least in her head.**

* * *

Lin should have been happy. She should have been relaxed. The Halloween issue of "Pretty Skell (N)e(X)t" was shaping up nicely. Plenty of content, all of it presented in a timely fashion and avoiding some of the more difficult complexities of converting xeno formats. She remembered previous collabs with the Ma-non and shuddered. No, their xeno contributors had been good sports and used human files as their standards, just this once. Her co-editor Alexa had only surprised her with 5 extra skell photos yesterday, a refreshing example of self-control. This issue would be all that they had promised their readers.

There were even a few celebrity contributions. Lin chewed her lip. Ga Buidhe had delivered a Wrothian creation myth with scenes worthy of a slasher film if you removed their cultural importance. Miss Warawa, always a favorite with the readers, had stretched the limits of her talents and the piece she had written was frankly surprising: a tight noir thriller that hinted at Nopon as essential part of Miran daily diets, with a payoff that had Lin re-reading the short story immediately. Even Elma had written something, not fiction, true, but her factual description of their first encounter with the Tainted was just as horrific as anything from a fever dream.

"Wow, Lin, if you keep chewing that lip, you're gonna need a new one, and do you trust the Maintenance Center to give you the right kind?"

Lin looked up to see Alexa, freshly arrived from the Administrative Skell Hangar, if the scent of skell oil and skell fuel and skell hydraulic fluid was any hint. Or maybe that was just normal Alexa. Lin felt a little jealous. Definitely gonna buff my baby once this issue goes to bed, she thought. "I don't look that nervous, do I?"

"Lin, you know you have the Commander doing whatever you ask. You just have to pitch it nicely, and maybe crumple that adorable chin of yours."

"Can't you talk to him about … this?" Lin waved hopelessly at the text floating on the main screen of the briefing area. (And if one needed proof of Alexa's statement, there was the fact that the fanzine had been granted use of the usually crucial area for today's final layout session. Not for the first time, either.)

"No way. He's too good at telling me 'no'. 'Can I have extra weapons on the Ares?' 'Can I squeeze a second pilot into the cockpit?' 'Can I have flame decals on my Verus?' No, no, and no. So you better be the one to do the talking. You did bake him pie, right?"

"Strawlenny and cream, his favorite."

"Nothing to worry about, then."

Jack Vandham, Commander of BLADE, arrived a few minutes later, only slightly late, and something about his demeanor was strangely hesitant. His bulk took up less space somehow, and his greeting was less gusty.

"Okay, sir, I want to get right to it. We want to make some, uh, changes to your piece."

"My story? You need to weed out any typos? I looked it over hard, but I'm not surprised that some of the little buggers crawled in."

"That's not the crawlies that we were thinking about…" Alexa started, before shutting her mouth at Lin's glance.

"The errors we corrected as a matter of course. We changed some things that were redundancies, and I'd really like to tighten up the scene at the school. Not all of our readers will get those references, you know. But really, we have a bigger issue with the … uh … tone…"

"It's like a story for kids," blurted Alexa.

"What she means, the perspective is kind of … young. I like it a lot," Lin hastened to add. "A lot. But I'm the edge of the readership, age-wise, even I know that."

"I thought you were looking for stuff for kids," Vandham said defensively.

"We support young artists. Not so much the content, but the writers and so on. You're not that, are you, sir?" Lin argued.

"You saying it doesn't suit?"

"It suits, it's just …" Lin waved her hands helplessly.

"Where'd you come up with it?" Alexa said. "I was kinda surprised you did something this long for us. Was it something you remember from being a kid? Like a story from then?"

"It was a bedtime story I used to tell, when I babysat my nephew. All the time. It was his favorite."

"Oh." All three turned to re-read the story on the screen.

* * *

 **a/n: I am cheesing this HARD to make it appropriate for this channel. Enjoy the cheese.**

 **Next up: Goosebumps x XCX.**


	2. Don't You Dare by J Vandham

**Don't You Dare, a Fan Fiction, by J. Vandham.**

 **There are spiders. Lots of them.**

* * *

"Aw, why'd you have to bring the little brat along?" muttered Wolf once again.

"Shut up, bozo. I promised her I would." Jack tried to make his answer sound less like he was whining. Instead, he jerked the arm of the little girl, trying to make her follow faster.

"You're the bozo. That was a stupid promise."

It had been. Because of that promise, their chances of sneaking into the Haunted House were ruined. Some grown-up in a suit and a wizard hat had stopped them even before they'd gotten past the gym lobby. "I'm sorry, but this is no place for a kindergartner." Jack hadn't tried to argue. The last thing he needed was having the adults find out that none of them belonged there. He and Wolf had counted on being tall enough to fool the ticket sellers, and that their masks would keep anyone from realizing that two elementary school kids had crashed the Middle School Haunted House. They'd heard stories about how scary it was, and they weren't going to wait one more year to find out.

But no way to hide the fact that Betsy was a little kid. She didn't come up to their hips, she was so short. And her costume was pure little kid, a cheap shiny princess costume in bright yellow. Nothing cool like his mech costume, or Wolf's gruesome zombie cowboy. Wolf had the best ideas, and his costume was dope as ... Jack tried to finish the sentence but something dragged at his arm.

Betsy was trying to pick up a piece of candy on the sidewalk. He groaned. He never should have brought her. Worse, he was lying to Wolf when he said he'd made a promise. A promise was cool, and another kid would understand that, kind of. There hadn't been any promise. She was here because he was too dumb to say no. Betsy had showed up at his door just as he was leaving, plastic shopping bag in hand, thumb in her mouth. She'd followed him as he walked towards Wolf's house. He'd only grabbed her hand because you can't have a little kid that dumb crossing the street on her own.. When he met with Wolf, it felt wrong just to let her loose. He figured he'd bring her back after the Haunted House raid.

He jerked her arm again, pulling her away from the road candy. "Stop it, that's gross," he muttered down at her.

"I swear to god if you bring her to my birthday party next week, you are so dead," complained Wolf.

"Like I'm going to come to your baby party," Jack said with a grin. He liked reminding Wolf that he was two years younger, at least for a few more days.

"My mom got a case of silly string. It's gonna be crazy."

Betsy was yanking away again, towards another piece of candy on the ground. Jack felt even more irritated. He wasn't interested in trick or treating. He wanted to go to that Haunted House. "Fine. Pick up the gross candy," he sneered at her. "Bet somebody poisoned it."

The little girl stopped and stared at him. Then she picked up the pink piece of candy and dropped it into her flimsy bag. She turned and trotted away to pick up another candy.

"Hey, what's she doing? This ain't no Easter egg hunt," said Wolf.

Jack looked around. The side street behind the gymnasium swarmed with kids during the day, but tonight it was deserted and eerie. Leading along the sidewalk, at regular intervals, were brightly wrapped pieces of candy. Betsy had picked up three by now, and was hopping towards a fourth.

"Hey, Wolf. Do you think somebody maybe put them out like that on purpose? Like a way to draw a kid in?"

"Like bait?"

Jack and Wolf looked at each other, while Betsy picked up a fifth piece. "That's messed up," muttered Wolf.

Jack nodded. He ran after Betsy. "Hey, kid. You pick up all the candy and give them to me. They're rotten. Make you sick. I'll give you something good for every one you find, though. Promise." He wasn't sure if he was gonna have to yell at her to make her understand but to his surprise she handed him her plastic bag at once. Then she smiled, a bright gap-toothed smile that kind of made him proud to be the big kid helping her.

"I can do that," she said, nodding her chubby face furiously.

Wolf and Jack followed behind Betsy, like detectives following a bloodhound. "We'll let her look," explained Jack. "Little kids are better at picking junk up off the ground."

Wolf agreed. "Yeah. And maybe the creep that put them out made it so only little babies would notice. Not kids like us."

Somehow neither of them was surprised when the trail came to an end in front of a creepy old house. Not an end, really. It turned and continued up the short path to the door of the house. But even Betsy wasn't dumb enough to follow through the narrow path, almost blocked by the hedges that grew alongside it. Instead, she grabbed Jack's hand in a tiny sticky squeeze, and popped her thumb in her mouth again.

"That's creepy," Wolf said.

"No duh, Captain Obvious."

"We gonna go look at it?"

Jack hesitated. If Betsy had whined or tugged, if Wolf had said another word, he would have made the right choice. Maybe even have bet Wolf he could beat him in a race back to the middle school. Except that would have left Betsy behind. Anyway, no one said anything else, and part of Jack's brain got angry about the candy, the trail, the obvious trap that would only work on a little kid as dumb as Betsy.

"Hell yes. Trying to trick a little kid. No one should get away with something that mean. We'll make 'em sorry."

"Yeah," muttered Wolf.

"Hell yeah," repeated Jack. "Look at us. We'll scare the ... uh ... snot out of them." He looked down uncomfortably at Betsy.

"Grrrrr. Woof!" Betsy barked angrily. "I'm a mean princess doggy."

"Maybe we should leave her here, on the sidewalk," Wolf suggested.

Jack knew that wasn't going to happen. Betsy was usually silent, but around him she could actually get kinda loud if she was upset. Plus she had a stranglehold on his hand by now. "Nah. Can't risk it. What if they're waiting behind us? Let's go."

Walking up the path was harder than it should have been. The hedges leaned in and pulled at them. His costume wasn't all that bulky, but the mask kept slipping when branches whapped at him. Wolf was lucky, wearing a vest and jeans, much better to move in, but Jack guessed his mask wasn't making things any easier. Betsy's poofy skirt kept snagging every step, but she stumbled on determinedly behind him. They reached a rusty red door, the paint peeling in long shards. There wasn't a bell or light, no pumpkin or decorations. Just a dull grey wedge of cobwebs in every corner, and a dull black door knocker in the center.

Jack could just barely peep into a window beside the stoop. It was dark, and half-blocked by more hedges, but he could make out dirty frayed curtains and what was probably a piano. No one seemed to be moving inside. The whole house seemed abandoned. There were a few yellowing free papers at the doorstep, swollen from rain, and jammed into the door frame was a thick note. He pulled it free after a little effort.

"Hey, you can't do that. That's stealing," said Wolf.

"I wanna know what's going on." The paper was folded several times over. When Jack opened it, there were only three words on it, printed in fat pencil letters.

 **DON'T YOU DARE**

Wolf was butting up against his shoulder, trying to read it. Jack crumpled the note before he could see it. "All right, let's do this." He banged on the door, the paper tight in his fist.

The house remained still. Jack could have sworn there wasn't even an echo behind the door. He banged again, this time hard enough to rattle the frame. Still nothing, and no sound.

"Try the knocker," whispered Wolf. It was quiet enough that he could hear the squeak of Betsy sucking her thumb furiously.

Jack fumbled at the knocker without releasing the paper. The black paint was rough as sandpaper and scratched his fingers when he plucked at it. He only managed to pull it an inch away before he had to let go. It hit the door with a crack that sounded louder than gunfire. Jack jumped back, but there was still no sign that anyone (or anything) was in the house.

"Great, no one home, let's go," said Wolf with relief. Jack was turning around to agree with his friend when the door swung open. No creaking, no shuffling, just a silent tug of air as it opened.

"No way. NO WAY," said Wolf, stumbling off the stoop.

Jack shouted into the darkness, one foot already moving back toward the sidewalk, "Hey, you in there!"

The trio was one second away from fleeing. Something grey and insubstantial floated through the doorway and coiled around a hank of Betsy's dress. She didn't have a chance to yelp when it pulled her inside.

Maybe one of the best things about being a kid that spends a lot of time day dreaming is that when something like this happens, you don't even think about it. Jack had spent hours considering zombie attacks, giant insect invasions, berserk robots, and demonic possessions. Every time there was a goddam school shooter drill, he'd spend the entire time doing his best to ignore the teacher, instead thinking about what he would do if tentacles shot up from the ground and tried to drag off his friends. He spent a good chunk of math class on that stuff too, to be honest. He was kind of shaky on fractions, maybe, but right then, that night, he didn't have to wonder or be afraid. He plunged after the glimmer of Betsy's yellow costume.

She was yelping plenty now. Howling, really, and from what he could tell, flailing and tugging against whatever was pulling her away. He didn't understand how the hallway behind the door could be that long, sloping downward just enough to make it a little hard to move along it safely. Not a slide, exactly, but really wrong.

"Jack! Jack! Come back!" Wolf's voice seemed really far away. The house was dark, but a little light shone down the long hallway from outside. The cobwebs were thicker, coming up from the floor now, making the edges of the walls soft and curving. He kept running forward, and the hallway didn't grow darker. Instead, the walls glowed with faint blue veins. The cobwebs, or whatever they were, pulsed with slivers of light.

The whole hallway was pulsing, maybe.

The hallway opened suddenly into a room. Jack could see counters and what looked like a broken stove, oven door hanging loose. An old kitchen, once upon a time. The floor had rotted through in the middle of the room and strands of that wispy grey stuff were pulling Betsy toward it. She was yanking and kicking, squirming and twisting, but she was slowly sliding down into the dirty blackness. Jack froze in the doorway. All his day dreaming wasn't enough to prepare him for this.

"JEFF!" she screamed and reached for him.

Dumb move, because a few more strands wrapped around her waist now and pulled hard. Stupid kid, he thought, I've told her that's not my name a billion times. She just doesn't want to learn. Serves her right if this house eats her. Give it a stomach ache too, probably, because she's pretty gross, even for a snot-nosed kid. Spit all over her thumb, all the time. Always whining, always getting in his way, dirty like only a little kid can get. She was a goner. While he was thinking this, he had also flung himself forward to grab her hands in his.

It was no good. He couldn't pull hard enough to get her free. Maybe if Wolf had followed and been there to help, maybe then they could have done it together. But Jack just had to choose friends too smart to jump into demonic spider killer houses. Great. He tugged harder, and Betsy kicked until her skirt whirled, but he could tell they were slipping closer. He didn't even have a solid grip on her. The note was still crumpled in his hand, now pressed against between his palm and Betsy's wrist. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a moving fringe along the rim of the hole. A wave of tiny spiderlets, with legs finer than eyelashes, fluttering in a living mist, and drifting from them that grey haze that had up until now only plucked at Betsy. Now the tips of a few strands slipped against his hands.

He took a deep breath, ready to shout for help, for the police, for something. He squeezed down on Betsy's hands, and he felt the scratch of that paper again. He opened his mouth and yelled, a tight high scream, proof that he wasn't grown up yet, not by a long shot. "Don't you dare!"

The draw weakened. He bent backward and almost got Betsy clear of the pit, but the strands tightened and resumed pulling. But he felt more sure of what to do. "Don't you DARE!" he shouted again, and this time it was more like a roar that was worthy of his full 5 feet and counting. He shifted one hand to try and get better leverage on Betsy, and remembered the note.

 **"DON'T.**  
 **YOU.**  
 **DARE!"**

Then he threw the note straight at the pit.

xcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxc

"Jack. JACK!" Somebody was pounding on his shoulder and shouting in his ear. Jack was flat on his back, lying on the ground. He tried to rub his eyes with his hand, but he couldn't move it. Something warm and sticky was glomped onto it. He looked over and saw a very grubby yellow princess almost sitting on his arm, holding his hand. Betsy's brown eyes were huge. Wolf was still shouting, and trying to shove him upright.

"Ohmygod, Jack, the house, it kind of crumpled into itself, like it was being sucked down a drain. But first you went flying, and like flying really fast, out of the house. You would have knocked me down if I hadn't jumped out of the way."

Jack was going to say something sarcastic and really salty. He managed to say, "Eaaauughhhahhhhg."

"Dude, you bounced hard when you landed too. It was funny. You should go out for football. You looked like something from t.v."

Jack shook his head a couple times, and then tried to shake Betsy off his hand. "Did the brat bounce too, at least?"

"Nope. You were holding her like the winning football. Total NFL, dude."

"Figures."

There wasn't a sign of a house anymore. No porch, no walkway, no hedges. There was an empty lot full of ugly grass stubble and surrounded by plastic mesh fence on skinny metal bars stuck into the ground. No pit in the middle either, although Jack wasn't going to look too hard.

By the time they reached Wolf's house, both he and Wolf were shouting and laughing as if nothing scary had happened. Not really scary. Just weird. A little. They kept shouting this at each other, back and forth, every block. "Dude, that was so ... weird." "Yeah, so weird. Really creepy." "Kinda creepy. More just weird." "Yeah, not creepy. Weird." "Weeeeeird." "Weeeeeeeeeeeeird!" Betsy hung onto Jack's hand and didn't say a word.

They hung out at Wolf's house for the rest of the evening. Smart choice, because Wolf had so many brothers and sisters, no one was going to ask them why they looked so messy, or even notice. Jack shed his beat-up plastic costume at once, and even spent a little time trying to pull grey webbing off Betsy's dress. No point, really, but then again, maybe her mom was used to her being this messy all the time. Might not even notice. He ate the whole-wheat pumpkin oatmeal cookies Wolf's mom offered him, trying to pretend they were as good as candy, and settled in to watching a Halloween show with talking golden retrievers, surrounded by Wolf's littler siblings. Betsy did the same, copying him as she so often did, but tonight she wasn't sucking her thumb. Instead, she held onto his hand with both of hers.

* * *

 **a/n: If you tell me that this belongs in Goosebumps x XCX crossover, I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the denial. LA LA LA LA LA. Also, hey, is that Wolf I see? And "Betsy"? Yes, and yes. I have done the numbers and if you squint really hard, they all could have been in the same school at the same time.**

 **Shout out to my kid who solved the problem of what came after the door opened. "Spiders." And then what? "More spiders." And then...? "Spiders. More of them. Lots of spiders." I am going to use this writing advice EVERY TIME I AM STUCK ON SOMETHING, honestly.**

 **Next up: How to put this nicely...**


	3. 3 Self Insertion

**Don't You Dare/3/ Self Insertion**

 **a/n: The editorial team hasn't conceded. Very plucky of them.**

 **All the good things, barring the family headcanon, belong to Monolithsoft.**

* * *

"Brrrr, so many spiders," muttered Alexa when she reached the end. "Maybe we could take a few out? Or make them less obvious? You know, some subtlety might make this more..."

Vandham interrupted her. "He liked spiders, so I put them in. He insisted."

Lin breezed quickly past that point. "It isn't bad, sir, but you gotta admit, that self-insertion is a little weird. I mean, I understand that as a starting point but you need to consider the reader."

"He wanted to be in the story. The kid liked spiders and he wanted to be the hero, so I made it that way. I pulled the rest from here and there, kids I remembered growing up, but those two things were his." Vandham blew out a loud puff of air. "Look, keep it in, take it out, change it, whatever you like. Skip it entirely if you want. Right now, I don't really care. I just wanted to write it down before I forgot it." He stomped out of the barracks without another word.

Lin and Alexa looked at each other with wide eyes. "Well, shoot, what do we do about that?" Alexa finally asked.

"We run it, and if no one else gets the shivers from it, that's their problem, because I'm really feeling it now."

* * *

 **a/n: I won a tiny prize for the central chapter, and was bound and determined to buff it up into something I could share here. Then I made the scrap of headcanon for Vandham's family and burst into tears. Send help.**

 **More of this headcanon showed up in Inktober18 11 Cruel. Betsy showed up in The Lily and the BLADE/22/Robots Are Awesome, as well as many other places (hysterical laughter).**

 **Happy Halloween, kids  
We're just telling  
each other stories in the dark  
right?**


End file.
